You are running a very outdated version of Internet Explorer. Patheos and most other websites will not display properly on this version. To better enjoy Patheos and your overall web experience, consider upgrading to the current version of Internet Explorer. Find more information HERE.

Historical Perspectives

While some scholarship today has cast the Sikh tradition as a hybrid of Hindu and Muslim beliefs, the tradition's own scholars contended for Sikhism's unique development as a religion that stood against the rigid practices of both dominant religions of the time. The tradition itself has had an immense impact in documenting, and shaping, Sikh history through the centuries.

Bhai Gurdas (d. 1636) remains until today the chief interpreter of Sikh life; he provided data of great significance for the lives of the first Sikh Gurus, early Sikh life, and the locations of the first Sikh congregations throughout South Asia. Like Bhai Gurdas, Bhai Mani Singh (d. 1738) was a scribe who was also known for his leadership in the Panth (the community). Guru Gobind Singh had sent him to oversee the affairs in Amritsar around 1700. Attributed to him are works of great historical significance, a Janam Sakhi and the Sikhan Di Bhagatmala—both interpretations of Bhai Gurdas's poems, called vars. An important contemporaneous chronicle of Guru Gobind Singh's life is the Sri Guru Sobha, attributed to a poet named Sainapati. Rattan Singh Bhangu's Panth Prakash was a landmark text from the early 19th century, detailing the lives of the ten Gurus and a decade and a half of the Khalsa's history. Santokh Singh (1787-1843) was a scholar trained in Amritsar who found patronage just North and West of Delhi. He composed and translated verse and prose in Hindi and Sanskrit, but his magnum opus was a Braj Bhasha work known as Guru Pratap Suraj Granth, a highly-stylized history of the Sikh Gurus and their families.

A new trend that emerged in the 19th century was the scholarly interest that Sikhs received from European civil servants and administrators under the auspices of British colonialism. Several British agents-cum-historians impacted Sikh historiography of the period. One of these was John Malcolm (1769-1833), whose Sketch of the Sikhs was first published in 1812. Joseph Davey Cunningham (1812-1851) published his History of the Sikhs in 1849, the same year that the British Army annexed Maharaja Ranjit Singh's kingdom. This account has generally been regarded as sympathetic to the Sikh religion and was controversial in London, resulting in Cunningham's censure by his British superiors for sympathizing too deeply with the natives.

German linguist Ernest Trumpp's (1821-85) translation of parts of the Sikh scripture, which he published under the title The Adi Granth, has been received less favorably by members of the community. This is due to Trumpp's dismissive editorial remarks offering less-than-favorable opinions of the Sikh future, and the translator's perceived disregard for Sikh etiquette when dealing with scripture. Max Arthur Macauliffe (1841-1913) was the British civil servant who published articles on the Sikhs in the 1870s. In 1893 he received Sikh institutional support to write a history of the Sikhs along with translations of sacred texts. The result was the six-volume Sikh Religion published in 1909. Macauliffe has been lauded, in Sikh circles, for his reliance on orthodox informants.